I Love This Idea (unless my boss gets the data)

Over on Techcrunch they are discussing a new startup that I find interesting:

Seattle based Rescue Time actually tackles the issue of having to input data into a time management tool for the time poor head on by offering a web based personal time management service that takes its input via software that tracks what you are doing on your computer at any given time, then uploads the data to the service for later review.

I saw a video from a few years ago that showed how various CEO’s tracked their time. It would be interesting to see this data for my own work day. I am a multi-tasker – so it isn’t unusual for me to have Firefox, Flock and IE7 all open, all with multiple tabs open, Word, Excel, my text editor, and several IM windows open a the same time. I’d like to see that graph 🙂

Of course, as an ex-bass, I wonder how businesses might use this to see what their employees really do with their day. The site hasn’t launched yet, so I can’t really say.

But if I were Rescue Time I would do everything I could to make sure this didn’t run in a corporat4e environment – or even from two computers on the same NAT. It’s a great idea that I can’t wait to try – but depending on the implementation, it could be abused.

1) It’s an app built for multitaskers (I’m one too!) What RescueTime pays attention to is what app or site your are USING, not what’s OPEN. So bounce around as much as you want!

2) I know you might be kidding around a bit about the Boss thing, but I wanted to tackle it nonetheless. RescueTime is not (and never will be) a tool for a person to to scrutinize another individual’s time-spend. In fact, it’s going to be against our terms-of-service. The data collector app will be JUST overt enough that an employee would be able to catch it if the boss installed it on the sly.